The Last Dead Body

The village of Greyhollow had been silent for months.

Once brimming with the warm laughter of farmers and the clang of blacksmiths, it now lay buried under a thick quilt of ash and dust. The disease had come suddenly—Black Whisper, they called it. A shadow that slipped into lungs and hearts, leaving only stiff bodies and shattered homes. The world outside had forgotten Greyhollow, or perhaps chosen to forget. Roads were barricaded. No one came. No one left.

Except for Thomas Kreele.

A pathologist with an appetite for the grotesque, Dr. Kreele had spent years studying post-mortem anomalies. When whispers of the strange affliction in Greyhollow reached him, he took it as a challenge—one last expedition to find the origin, to understand the death that killed a town.

He arrived in a white van, wheels crunching over dried bones and brittle leaves. He wore a filtered mask, thick gloves, and a camera strapped to his shoulder. The villagers had died in odd ways—eyes wide open, mouths contorted into silent screams, limbs bent as if caught mid-flight. Some were still in bed, others curled in corners, clutching themselves as if trying to hold their souls inside.

But Kreele wasn’t afraid. Not yet.

Inside the town hall, where Greyhollow’s leaders had once held evening meetings, he found what he was looking for.

A body—untouched by decay.

It lay on a stone table, surrounded by old candles and dried herbs. The corpse was of a man, middle-aged, dressed in ceremonial robes that shimmered faintly in the low light. His face was pale but peaceful, his hands folded neatly over his chest. There were no signs of struggle or fear.

Unlike the others, this body looked placed… preserved.

Kreele leaned in, examining the figure. “Why are you still fresh?” he muttered, noting the absence of flies, of rot. The air around the body smelled faintly of burned sage and metal.

He began his work, carefully cutting into the abdomen to extract samples. But the moment his scalpel touched the flesh, the air turned cold. Not just chilly—freezing. Frost crept across the windows like fingers trying to claw their way inside.

Kreele’s breath fogged up the lens of his camera. He stepped back, confused. The corpse had not bled. No fluid, no resistance. Just… silence.

And then, the eyes opened.

Not slowly—violently. As if something behind them had snapped awake.

Kreele stumbled back, slamming into a bench. “No. No, no,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Impossible.”

The man on the table sat up with a slow, grinding motion, like a puppet being pulled by strings coated in rust. His head turned toward Kreele, and his mouth opened wide—not to speak, but to exhale.

From within, a cloud of black mist poured out.

Kreele screamed, yanking his mask tighter, but the mist ignored fabric and filter. It seeped into the room, into him. He fell to his knees, coughing violently. The taste was bitter, ancient. Like dust from a sealed tomb.

Memories that weren’t his began to flood his mind: rituals in candlelit cellars, sacrifices to forgotten gods, prayers whispered into soil. He saw Greyhollow not as a town, but as a vessel—a place chosen to hold something terrible.

The last dead body… wasn’t dead.

It was the key.

The townsfolk had tried to contain the evil. They had given it form, given it flesh, and placed it on that stone table. They died to keep it there. And now, Kreele had opened the lock.

The figure stood now, fully risen. Its eyes were black marbles that reflected no light. Its voice, when it finally spoke, was not a voice at all—but a chorus of screams, spoken all at once.

“You have woken me.”

Kreele tried to crawl, but the air was thick. Time itself seemed to slow. His limbs felt buried in invisible tar. “W-what… are you?” he gasped.

“I am what remains when men believe they are gods.”

With a flick of its hand, the figure lifted Kreele into the air. Bones cracked. Blood seeped from his eyes. And in that final moment, he understood.

Greyhollow had not died from disease.

It had made a deal.

They had bargained their lives to trap the ancient thing that once walked between realms. The villagers sacrificed themselves—not out of fear, but necessity. They had given death a vessel.

And Kreele, in his arrogant pursuit of knowledge, had undone it all.

As his body fell lifeless to the floor, the figure knelt beside him. With blackened fingers, it gently closed Kreele’s eyes.

Then it turned to the camera.

It picked it up, peering into the lens as if looking straight through to the soul of whoever might one day see the footage.

“You’ll come looking,” it whispered. “Curious things always do.”

And with that, it walked out into the ash-covered streets of Greyhollow—no longer bound.

No longer alone.

Just beginning.